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In 1986, Steve Earle's debut LP, Guitar Town, was one of the albums that reenergized and redefined country music in the genre's dreary post-Urban Cowboy days. The raw, twang-fueled guitars and Earle's blue-collar lyrics heralded a movement toward neo-traditionalism that would turn Earle, Dwight Yoakam and others into country-rock superstars, leading to what Earle himself would humorously label country music's "Great Credibility Scare." Upon its release, the album topped the country chart and would go on to score a pair of Grammy nominations. It also earned a spot among Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

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On October 14th, MCA Nashville/UMe will celebrate the 30th anniversary of Guitar Town with the release of a two-disc, deluxe edition of the album featuring the LP remastered from the original tapes and a previously unreleased 19-song live show recorded on the Guitar Town Tour at the Park West in Chicago in 1986. The concert will also be available on its own as a double LP on 180-gram vinyl.

"It took a long time, but my dreams came true when I played a WXRT dollar show on the stage of the Park West in Chicago," Earle tells Rolling Stone Country. "The place was full and I played my whole album and everything I'd written for the second album and ran out of songs. I had to come out with a guitar by myself and do a third encore. At that point I knew I had a career."

Courtesy MCA Nashville/UMe

Earle, who released the duet album Colvin and Earle and toured with longtime friend Shawn Colvin earlier this year, will once again perform Guitar Town in its entirety during a handful of U.S. and Canadian shows this fall. This month, he's set to join Emmylou Harris, Robert Plant, Patty Griffin, Buddy Miller and the Milk Carton Kids for the Lampedusa Concerts for Refugees Tour, October 12th to 21st, raising awareness of the unprecedented worldwide refugee crisis. Funds raised by Lampedusa will support educational programs for refugees around the world. Earle, Harris and Miller offered a sneak preview of the tour last month during an episode of the web series Skyville Live.

Earle's other recent recording projects include the 2015 blues LP Terraplane. He's headed into the studio again next month to work on what he says is, "for lack of a better description," a country album.

"I tell people sometimes it's a record I might've made if [then-MCA Nashville label head Jimmy] Bowen hadn't pissed me off after Guitar Town," he explains. "It's really just some songs that got written accidentally."